New Mini-Series: Friday Hope Fest

First up: Organizing success stories from rural areas

Greetings, readers, Deanna here: Welcome to our new mini-series, “Friday Hope Fest.” Back when we were producing the print version of the Hightower Lowdown (yes, we still miss it, too!), we often used our November and December issues of major election years to share stories of electoral success that might not have hit your radars. And in years where we’d felt, ahem, despair and rage at the national results, it really helped to see that the work we truly believe in—grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor organizing on strong progressive values and solidarity—is not only happening, but is working.

We’ll be spending our Friday posts from now through the end of the year sharing these stories with you, and we also want to hear of wins from your end of the world. And by “win,” we don’t just mean winning races—we want to hear about places that held back against the Republican-leaning national trend, or where a progressive ran in a race that had been uncontested for years, or what-have-you. What’s happening out there?

How Did These Local Democrats Do It?!

Last night, I joined a RuralOrganizing.org online gathering to debrief the election results. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling up to any of it; I was having a hard time breaking out of the cynicism and paralysis I’d sunk into by the end of last week. Hearing from four organizers who worked on the most recent elections in Republican-heavy districts finally pierced through all of the frustration I’ve been feeling with the hot-takes that are a constant stream of news right now.

On hand were Callie Barr, who ran for Congress in northern Michigan; Amanda Holowell from When We All Vote, who helped moved districts outside of Atlanta leftwards; Leslie Carey, chair of the Henderson County (NC) Democrats, hit hard by Hurricane Helene; and Chris Kalcich, chair of the Snyder County (PA) Democrats, a rural county smack dab in the center of the state. These were not rose-colored glasses stories that we heard: We heard about the challenges of organizing in places that the national party seems to have abandoned, but we also heard about the tremendous joy and power brought by neighbors connecting.

The main thing that struck me about everything I heard from their work was that they were all working from a playbook that Hightower has long advocated for: we’ve got to put the “party” back into “party politics.” These organizers know that a committee meeting once a month at 9am on a Saturday is not the most attractive way to bring in fresh faces, especially folks with young families. So, they went to where the people are and talked to them there: they hosted early-evening happy hours, they showed up at already-planned local events, they offered child care at events, and much more. They listened to their community, and they also made painstaking efforts to introduce community members to each other, creating less dependency on a single point of access to politics (the party office), and stronger relationships among their membership.

Most notably, none of them started this work this year: this work began in 2016 for many of them, and they’re committed to the long haul. When one county party heard, for example, that they didn’t meet the criteria to have coordinated support from the Harris campaign, they didn’t pout and cry in their beer. They took things into their own hands and made regular trips to the coordinated office for supplies, advice and more. And they got it!

RuralOrganizing.org is going to be hosting more debrief gatherings in the future—be sure to get on their list. The next one is on December 10th, and you can register for it here.